Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Obama is a hostage ...

New York Times columnist Frank Rich branded himself a new kind of wikileaker in his column, "All the President's Captors". Rich diagnosed Obama using

an article titled 'Understanding Stockholm Syndrome' in the online archives of The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim's loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors 'good side' and develop psychological characteristics to please them, 'dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think'.

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Ryan: Tax cut deal not a stimulus (see video)

US Representative Paul Ryan (Republican, Wisconsin) insists that the deal between Republicans and the White House on the Bush tax cuts is not a second stimulus and that the agreement will promote growth despite adding to the deficit._________________________________

There, in a few short sentences is everything you need to know about Obama's meltdown: From powerful campaigner to a presidential caver, surrendering without a fight. But even if the president is a hostage, who are Obama's real captors? The GOP? No. Not the GOP. The GOP is also a hostage. So who are the real culprits?

First, we know the FBI bulletin is an accurate psychological diagnosis: Outwardly Obama exhibits the classic signs of a hostage captured by criminals, trapped in a Stockholm syndrome. The prisoner surrenders, does exactly what his captors demand, without a fight. Joins them.

Here the cave is so complete he's reduced to publicly condemning his own party for being "sanctimonious" hypocrites, while he's hypocritically "selling" Bush's totally ineffectual non-job-creating tax cuts for the rich to his Democrat challengers. The irony is historic.

So on the surface, it may look like a tragically weak President Obama is surrendering to his GOP captors, siding with his captors to bring back the GOP's disastrous Reaganomics policies, destroying the American economy without a fight. But the truth is, Obama defected to the dark side before he was elected, just as Clinton, Bush and Reagan caved into the same Conspiracy.

Jack Bauer stopped a hostage taking of a president. Obama caved

This is all so predictable: We warned our readers of this takeover early in Obama's administration: When Obama discarded guys like Paul Volcker, picked insiders like Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke with ideological ties to the Goldman Conspiracy and the GOP, we knew Obama was doomed from the get-go.

Here's the plot, originally dramatized when President Obama was new, when he was a savior with a powerful mandate. But lurking in the shadows we saw an ominous dark shadow that is rapidly becoming a reality, as he merges into the Conspiracy:

1. American government is now run by the Goldman Conspiracy

Article in Portfolio: "The Usual Suspects ... exposed ... the Goldman Sachs 'conspiracy' to take over the US financial system". The financial sector explodes: nineteen percent of US corporate profits in 1986 to over forty percent in a decade.

2. Huge conflicts motivating Wall Street's Trojan Horse

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at Goldman for thirty years. His $700 million fortune threatened in 2008 by Goldman's $20 billion derivatives exposure at AIG; he "saved" AIG. Today, his puppets Geithner, Summers and Bernanke still working inside for Wall Street.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi: "The Big Takeover, how Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution ... By creating a crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand". And the Conspiracy is "transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below".

5. How Wall Street insiders mislead American for personal gain

Before the meltdown, Paulson mislead America: "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime". He lied. Bloomberg reported that in 2006, a month after leaving Goldman, Paulson was at Camp David warning the president of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy".

6. Wall Street's CEOs rule like dictators in a banana republic

Taibbi adds: "Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling interest in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks", and many more bad deals, including $5.5 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and $3.3 trillion at the Fed.

7. Banks recycled cheap bailout money, got richer, shafted America

Wall Street was virtually bankrupt when insider Paulson conned a clueless Congress out of $780 billion of taxpayer cash to save his Wall Street buddies. His buddies quickly reported "blockbuster" earnings and mega-bonuses, while shafting taxpayers.

8. Wall Street has already set the stage for another, bigger disaster

After the 2008 election at the peak of the banking crisis, John Whitehead, former Reagan deputy secretary of state, former Goldman Sachs chairman and former chairman of the New York Fed, warned America's recovery would take years, burn trillions, result in massive deficits: "A road to disaster ... but I don't see a solution here" just another depression.

9. Wall Street made an un-American bet on Disaster Capitalism

Buy Goldman stock? Yes, if you're betting that the GOP's Reaganomics is coming back, strong, tightening its stranglehold on Washington, taxpayers, the American economy.

10. Now Obama's turned the Goldman Conspiracy into a superpower

Jack Bauer's a great mythical hero. We need to believe in heroes who will protect the little guy, the middle class. Barack Obama's voters expected a hero, a savior like Jack Bauer. Today Obama's gone from hero to a hostage of the dark side. Still, Bauer remains a symbol of hope for a real revolution, not a temporary populist Tea Party-style reform movement that is also a hostage of the Conspiracy. Hopefully some new hero will emerge, take power back from Wall Street, from the GOP, from Obama, and return it to the people.

11. Warning, all Americans now hostages to the Conspiracy

America is ruled by this Conspiracy, its lobbyists' cash, its Congress, its billionaire backers. Accept it. Eventually everyone surrenders. Congressional leaders, political parties, even presidents all become hostages: Bush, Clinton, even Reagan, now Obama. All this was so predictable early in Obama's presidency, which made the episode of "24" so prophetic. Just as Paulson took Congress and Bush hostage, in "24" Jack Bauer was fighting a terrorist dictator attacking the White House and taking a president hostage. A dramatic signal of things to come, the Conspiracy holding Obama hostage.

Forget America's external enemies, China, Iran and al Qaeda. We have enemies within who need no help in destroying American. Indeed, if as predicted China becomes the sole global superpower by 2040, three times America's GDP, it will happen because we self-destruct, because as a nation we cave, because we surrender to the Goldman Conspiracy, we let them continue on their megalomaniacal path to a mega-meltdown.

Hopefully we will get a soft wake-up call, a divine intervention, black swan, maybe a mini-revolution overthrowing the Conspiracy holding America hostage. Unfortunately the real wake-up call is likely come too late, catch our leaders by surprise, before they can react. Then we'll get the Great Depression Two, a pandemic consuming all world economies, triggering mass class rebellions against the rich, much like revolutions that overthrew past empires.

All so predictable: Even Warren Buffett knows a revolution is coming, admitted as much a few years ago: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning". Warning: His world is reaching a incendiary flash point: Revolutions are coming, much sooner than you think.